


afterwards

by belladonnaprice



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-12
Updated: 2018-05-12
Packaged: 2021-02-27 18:26:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22820194
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/belladonnaprice/pseuds/belladonnaprice
Summary: The contents of Bucky Barnes's dreamstate from the fall to Infinity War.





	afterwards

Imagine an endless night. You’re sleeping and you know it, but you can’t wake up.

Your body breathes.

Your heart beats.

Your eyelashes flutter in slumber.

You are aware and there’s nothing but the quiet dark.

No hum of traffic.

No owls hooting in the distance.

No rush and roar of water upon sand.

Bucky Barnes knew only this emptiness for many years.

Not the splatter of warm blood upon his body’s face.

Not the scent of gunmetal and oil.

Not the sound of pleading.

Only a vast quiet.

Until the voice.

It was just a burble of content awareness at first. No words, barely any emotion. But it was something.

And it calmed him.

The tendrils of dreams began to reach him. Over hours? Or days? Or years. He was unsure, but it didn’t matter. Because someone else shared this silence.

Later still, it became a murmur. A cooing of happiness, sometimes the faint fear of a bad dream.

On and on and on and then one day-

“Hello?”

Bucky jerks at the sound of a voice, so sweet and bell-like and clearly the voice of a child. It should have woken him, this startlement. But it didn’t and he didn’t want to know why.

“Hell-O-o.” The voice sing-songs.

Making words in this quiet place feels wrong. But his mam had raised him to be polite.

“Who’s there?” He asks, barely a whisper.

“I am.” The voice replies cheerily.

Bucky feels his lips purse. They feel stiff somehow, cold and wrong. He ignores it.

“Who are you?” He asks, a little braver now that nothing has come out of the dark to eat him up.

“I am me.” There was a definite giggle in the voice now and Bucky knew he would have to offer his name first if he hoped to have The Voice’s in return.

“My name is Bucky. What’s yours?”

“I am Shuri Udaku of the Golden Tribe, daughter of King T’Chaka and Queen Ramonda, Princess of Wakanda. I’m very pleased to meet you Bucky. What kind of name is Bucky?”

Bucky blinks at the title and scrambles for an answer to her question.

“It’s a nickname, from my middle name.”

She hums and he’s almost sure she’s wrinkling her nose. In distaste or simply absorbing the information, he’s not sure.

She’s silent for long enough that he panics, not wanting to be alone once more.

“I’m from Brooklyn, New York. I’ve never heard of Wakanda before. Is it nice there?”

Her awareness once more focuses on him and her words seem to bounce around him with joy like a young child would.

“It’s the most beautiful place in the world.” She announces proudly. “And it’s in Africa.”

“Africa, huh? That’s pretty neat. You speak English very well, especially for a kid.”

He hears hear make a sound, something between a snort and a laugh.

“I’m not speaking English, although I could if I wanted to. All of Wakanda’s children learn many languages. Our schools know no rival, my brother says it is so.”

Bucky ponders that for a moment and wonders, briefly, despairingly, if his mind has finally broken and he’s making up fairytales complete with princesses in his madness.

“How can I understand you then, huh? I only know English and a bit of Parisian.”

She’s silent for a moment.

“I think this is the Twilight of Dreams. There is no language here. Only understanding.”

Bucky’s never heard of anything of the like, but he’ll accept her words as truth.

The other options are too bleak.

She continues to tell him of Wakanda, with a child’s pride and happiness.

She tells him of the Dora who are women and warriors and wonderful.

She tells him of her science classes, that even so young, they are less classes and more an exploration.

She tells him the myths and legends and histories of the place she calls home.

Her love for her home is so evident in her voice that Bucky falls in love with the idea of so wonderful a place.

Too soon her awareness is pulled away into the waking day.

He hopes she will come again.

***

The little princess’s visits give him something to look forward to.

It quickly becomes evident that she is brilliant, even so young.

She teaches him of science and art and language and he can barely keep up.

She flits between subjects like the world’s most persnickety butterfly.

She brings a little light to this endless slumber of his.

She tells him of a future he could only hope to see one day.

Of flying cars

Of laser swords and aliens

Of space travel

Asimov ain’t got nothin’ on this kid, he thinks fondly.

She reminds him a little bit of his Becca. A little bit of his Steve.

A little bit of himself, once upon a time. 

***

And then things change.

The quiet dark shivers. Or maybe it’s him.

Another voice breaks in, but it sounds different from Shuri’s. Echoing.

“Bucky?”

And

Time

Slips

And for the first time in so many years, Bucky Barnes wakes up.

***

His mind slams into his body and his eyes widen as they take in Steve’s pummeled face.

“Then do it,” he mumbles past bruises and blood, “Because I’m with you ‘til the end of the line.”

The airborne wreckage groans around them and Steve falls away from him.

Without conscious thought, Bucky lets go and follows him into the river.

***

He doesn’t hear the little princess when he sleeps anymore. He does not use the internet to see if she really exists.

He couldn’t bear it if she didn’t.

***

Bucharest is a train wreck.

Neither he nor Steve understand the meaning or consequences of blunt force trauma.

And then he’s tackled by a man in a cat suit.

***

So many things have changed in the world.

Sometimes, Bucky wishes he had just stayed in the quiet dark.

Others, when he hears a name, he’s glad he’s awake.

***

The cat man is T’Challa.

He is Little Shuri’s brother.

***

The not-so-little-anymore Princess does not remember. Does not even bat an eyelash in recognition.

Bucky thinks he’s okay with this.

She was his saving grace for so long and now she’s promised to fix him once more.

Shuri has a good heart and a brilliant mind.

She is smiles and wit and reassurances.

Going back into the ice doesn’t feel like surrender, it feels like a promise.

***

He doesn’t speak to her in cryo, not any more.

Her mind is too structured to go wandering.

But he does hear her music and her voice.

It keeps his heart calm and allows her to realign synapses and reorganize words and obliterate every trace of Hydra from his brain.

***

That is not to say that, once he is awake, the road is easy.

There is too much guilt and shame and sorrow cluttering up his chest.

She finds him a counselor specializing in combat veterans and survivors.

He is both.

It helps.

She allows him to marvel at her designs.

She absently pats his hair while deep in coding.

She is filled with life and laughter and mischief and she teaches him how to live again.

***

When he is sure he is safe from relapsing, from harming others, he asks her what comes next.

Her grin is impish

***

There are children touching his face. They laugh high and bright and his chest relaxes just a little more.

The sun is already bright and high in the sky. It is well past time to be awake even though he has been told time and again that rest in necessary to heal.

She waits for him. He is her project, he knows this. She enjoys solving puzzles and putting broken things back together, but above all, she cherishes the well being of her people.

Somewhere along the way, she has begun to adopt him.

“Good morning, Sergeant Barnes.”

He had tried on and discarded so many of his names and none had felt right. The formality of this address had, at least, fit well enough.

This morning, something in his heart had shifted.

His bones no longer ached with remembered cold.

His lungs no longer seized with panic.

His teeth no longer clenched against the need to cry out.

And his eyes no longer felt the constant burn of sorrow for the lives lost and ruined, by his hand and another’s will.

He takes a breath and nods in greeting.

“Bucky.” Words still come sparingly, but she seems to understand all the same.

***

There were goats.

Her eyes laughed at him.

There were goats and a little house and a bit of sweet earth in which to grow things.

He had been a city boy in his youth, but the idea of nurturing life appealed to him.

He would learn how to take care of the little farm.

He would create instead of destroy.

***

Steve visited occasionally. The had war wearied him, sometimes beyond words.

The drive to fight, to try and do the right thing, to protect those who could not protect themselves ate at him.

Sometimes it seemed as though it would devour him whole.

Bucky invited him to stay.

Pleaded, really.

“Imagine it” he said “A quiet life. There are so many others that can fight now.”

Steve had paled at that and left without staying for dinner.

Bucky didn’t pretend to understand.

But he also didn’t feel the need to follow.

Unless the world was ending, he would tend his sweet earth and fuzzy companions.

He would take back some of what had been stolen from him.

He would let the Sun shine in his life. 

***

The world was ending.

Didn’t that just figure.

Bucky took a breath and looked at the arm.

And braced himself for what was to come.

***

His stomach had felt wrong first. A strange coiling that felt a little like fear and a lot like hollowness. He staggered forward to his oldest friend, wanting, needing, reassurance.

“Steve?”

Barely did the sound make it past his lips before the unraveling, curdling, fluttering sensation took hold of his whole body.

He didn’t feel anything at all as the wind blew him away.

***

There are others in the quiet dark now.

So many so that he feels some inane need to rename it.

But it fits still, somehow. Even with all the voices.

Fear, confusion, sorrow, panic, and for some, shuddering relief at not having to continue.

He seeks out The Voice, the girl who saved him. The one who put his mind back together in the midst of revolutionizing the world.

“Shuri?” His voice cracks, but it’s loud enough to draw her to him.

“Well, that didn’t go quite as planned, did it, White Wolf?” Her voice wavers. It’s only a little fear, as her minds quickly spins through possibilities trying to parse what happened to them.

Her brother is here too, somewhere. They both know it, feel it somehow.

Another voice speeds toward them, pulled in by their gravity.

Fear, confusion, and panic radiating off him.

“Hey uh, you guys know what happened? Because I don’t know what happened. One second I was with Mr. Stark and we were on this freaky orange planet after a showdown with a mad titan and then my stomach felt wrong and then everything went fizzy and I’m kind of freaking out really hard right now.”

The boy’s babble washes over them and if he had had eyes, Bucky would have blinked at the torrent of words. Would the boy have drawn breath in the middle, he wondered, if he had had lungs to do so?

Shuri’s voice sounds, dispensing distant words as she still spins through likely scenarios. She and the boy, relieved to have science and a new friend to rely on, begin a rapid fire exchange of information.

They needn’t bother, he thinks. Something’s coming. Something bright and shining. Starlike but still so far in the distance. The quiet dark feels thinner, lighter.

Another battle on the horizon.

And after, maybe, a little more peace.

—

**Author's Note:**

> *Shuri is very young when she speaks to Bucky, and asleep. She does not remember these exchanges.
> 
> **The Twilight of Dreams is an idea I appropriated from a series of novels called the Ephemera series by Anne Bishop.


End file.
